An interesting thought. I'd IM'd this person in the first place because they'd left me a phone message on a completely different topic, and seemed to want to chat about that.
Well, it might if you speak Minnesotan, or one of the other more tender, nuance-inflected dialects of American. I prefer blunt explicitness myself, but when dealing with a lover originally from Wisconsin, this will get me accused of being "mean". I never stop croggling at the breadth of possible communication styles, and how desperately badly they can mesh, even with the best of intentions on all sides. Especially if one or more parties doesn't recognize that a difference in style, rather than the presence of positive malice, is the problem. So yes, I agree with you, but I can imagine lots of people who wouldn't believe it unless they were told.
oooh. That's brilliant, that is. Though I would still add that different parts of the country have different local norms for the strength of their tact filters, and don't necessarily recognize that their standards aren't universal. Thus you get Southerners who believe that everyone in Boston is Very Rude, f'rinstance.
In some dialects, that's exactly what it means. I don't know how common this is, but there are ... places? subcultures? where "I don't want to discuss this topic now" is a relatively gentle way to end a conversation. Attempting to change the subject and continue the conversation, thus forcing the person to end the conversation less gently (or put up with an unwelcome conversation to be polite), is pushy and discourteous. This does not appear to be anything like the custom in NYC or Boston, but I don't think that invalidates it. It's not always obvious when people are using subtly different communications protocols, especially for signaling stuff like courtesy and urgency around the edges of primary meaning.
Well, if it was the only thing I was wanting to discuss right then it would. But that doesn't seem to apply to the situation as you describe it. People are weird?
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Gaaack. How do any of us ever communicate?
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MKK